How to fix "Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client" problem

by Marion Bates <mbates at whoopis.com>

MySQL 4.1 and up uses an authentication protocol based on a password hashing algorithm that is incompatible with that used by older clients. If you upgrade the server to 4.1, attempts to connect to it with an older client may fail with the following message:

shell> mysql
Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client

To solve this problem, you should use one of the following approaches: